Will South Africa Be Okay?. Jan-Jan Joubert
generally deeply undynamic social force, they know every trick of red tape in the book that silently stifles initiative and vigour and promotes disheartening mediocrity. In the case of the switch-over from the ANC to the opposition governments, this behaviour on the part of ANC cadres employed as officials or workers in newly opposition-run municipalities was in truth much worse and far more malicious, because many of those cadres actively sabotaged the efforts of the newly elected municipal leadership to improve life and service delivery for its citizens. Dirty tricks, destruction of infrastructure and refusal to implement or delaying implementation of the decisions of the newly elected municipal political leadership are also a blatant and completely unacceptable denial of the democratic will of the majority of the population, who were fed up with pathetic and corrupt ANC mismanagement. When it comes to public servants as a species, those ANC-minded officials and workers are the lowest and most despicable form of life. They are the dregs of the public service.
One must, however, give credit where it is due. Each of the dozens of councils taken over by the opposition parties has been undoubtedly and demonstrably better run than when the ANC had been in charge. It was to the overall good of every single one, without exception. If I were the ANC, none of the jaw-droppingly incompetent, wasteful and crooked things I have done since 1994 to ruin my once-noble name and turn it into a laughing stock would make me as ashamed as the way the opposition coalitions are so clearly and indisputably governing better than the ANC. Of course the coalition governments could have done better, especially regarding some disappointingly incompetent and infuriating errors in Tshwane, but what the former opposition partners did specifically for the financial management and viability of, for example, the Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay metros by not stealing and squandering as heinously as the ANC governments did, is an outstanding achievement for which these DA-led coalitions surely deserve more recognition and gratitude.
The astounding consequences of this are that nearly all the coalitions have remained intact for so many years, even though the co-operation is between parties that have nothing in common except their goal to just make their town a better, cleaner, more efficient and more honest place than it was under the ANC. One can hardly believe that of all the coalition municipalities between the DA, EFF, FF Plus, ACDP, Cope and the UDM, only two – Metsimaholo (Sasolburg) and Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth) – collapsed within the first three years (which means by 3 August 2019). Moreover, in both cases it happened under somewhat strange circumstances. The Metsimaholo coalition collapsed after the SACP had misled voters in a by-election by claiming that their candidates were standing in opposition to the ANC, only to do a highly unethical about-turn after the election and hand their support to the ANC. The ANC thereby gained control of the municipality, even though 67% of the voters had voted against the party.
In Nelson Mandela Bay, the UDM – in contrast to elsewhere in the country – fell out with the DA, and then withdrew their support from the coalition. The opposition could well have remained in control if the then DA mayor, Athol Trollip, hadn’t flatly refused to co-operate with the EFF in that council. This was an unfortunate instance of personal political stupidity which cost the local DA dearly and delivered the hapless residents of Port Elizabeth into the hands of a coalition where the EFF (which the DA had excluded) now supports a dubious local UDM leader. This leader co-operates with the very ANC that over many years had brought the metro to the brink of collapse through corruption, wastage and common low-class thieving (summed up in the title of Chippy Olver’s in-depth study How to Steal a City: The Battle for Nelson Mandela Bay). The governing coalition had performed miracles in improving the situation, but within a year of the return of ANC-dominated municipal leadership the auditor-general’s report showed accurately and shockingly how the same mismanagement, corruption and self-enrichment had made a comeback. What a soul-destroying pity.
But because the coalitions didn’t make the voters aware of their successes, because the backlogs made it impossible to immediately duplicate the shining example of Cape Town, and because the various parties in the coalitions became seriously divided on all sorts of other policy matters, the coalition governments did not provide enough voters with a reason to stop supporting the ANC. In 2019 the ANC achieved better results in Tshwane, Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay than it had done in 2016, although in all three of those metros the party’s support is still below 50%.
Another reason why people keep voting for the ANC is that the party leader is no longer Jacob Zuma, but Cyril Ramaphosa. It is beyond doubt that Ramaphosa is an improvement on Zuma, even if it’s only because Zuma was a disaster, a disgrace and an embarrassment and just about anybody would have been an improvement on him. That sentiment that the ANC – as incompetent as they are – is at least on the mend (a sentiment that is in my view unfounded, but is a general feeling among many voters nonetheless) would have made many ANC voters think twice and decide they might just as well give the party another chance.
A further reason why people vote ANC despite the party’s shortcomings is that they are motivated by loyalty to and respect for the ANC’s incomparably proud history, stature and contribution to democratisation. In the same way that many people voted DA in 2019, and will undoubtedly do so again enthusiastically because of the DA’s track record and liberal, non-racial grounding despite its inept and alienating behaviour in the 2019 election, people will vote ANC because their blood is green as much as the blood of many DA voters is blue. This is not knee-jerk loyalty – to them, at the core and despite shortcomings, it is still the best option.
In this regard, anyone will have to concede that although the ANC isn’t exactly an inspiring model of integrity, the ruling party’s retention of power in 2019 was undoubtedly assisted by the pathetic internal defects that characterised the opposition parties. Firstly, as has already been explained, the opposition parties have to team up to unseat the ANC nationally or in any province apart from the Western Cape. But since 2016 the opposition has largely lost that common vision and that strategic leadership of a post-ideological, magnanimous cooperation agreement in aid of clean governance, better financial management and better service delivery. The lazy answer is that Zuma is no longer there as a common enemy. The fact that this is such a general answer is a disappointing reflection of the level of general political discourse and analysis in our country, because it’s rubbish. There are several reasons why the opposition was unable to work together in 2019 as they had done in 2016. The biggest of these is the self-importance, unpleasantness and hot-headedness of the DA’s strategic brains trust (currently, clearly no longer as brainy as before, or in hibernation), which is loath to give coalition partners opportunities and recognition in government, and in fact chased away the parties that had been so willing to co-operate with them despite their all-too-often insulting manner and totally unjustified superciliousness. This important phenomenon is discussed in more detail in the chapter that looks at what is wrong with the DA.
Not only was the ANC boosted by the decay in the united opposition front, but the situation within most of the big opposition parties was also so unappealing that it didn’t inspire doubting ANC voters with an urge to switch to the opposition. At times it almost seemed as if the DA, with their lack of direction and their spitefulness, wanted to give people reasons not to vote for them. This would have encouraged many ANC voters to keep voting ANC instead. That so many DA voters refused to put such unattractive messiness above the deeper and strictly positive principles of constitutionality, nation building, non-racialism, reconciliation and clean governance probably says more about the positivity of the DA voters than it does about the DA itself.
The EFF’s strengths caused their support to grow, but they, too, have failings that make it harder for them to woo away ANC voters. Firstly, many people find their frequently uncouth behaviour and sowing of racial division totally unacceptable. Secondly, their economic and land policies especially are too extreme for many people. In the many countries where such policies were adopted, they invariably not only failed but also led to disaster, collapse and misery. Thirdly, the EFF and some of its top leaders have a number of giant question marks over them in respect of alleged and sometimes proven corruption and other morally dubious behaviour. A few examples in this regard are the On-Point tender fraud, accepting donations of large sums of money from the likes of alleged tobacco smuggler Adriano Mazzotti and, last but not least, the VBS debacle. The IFP has been experiencing an upsurge on every level in the past few years, and in 2019 the party, for the first time in 25 years, undoubtedly took